VILLANELLEThis French syllabic form has no set number of syllables per line; common choices seem to be between eight and eleven. (English versions of the villanelle sometimes appear in accentual syllabics, featuring a perennial favorite, iambic pentameter.) The villanelle carries a pattern of only two rhymes, and is marked most distinctively by its alternating refrain, which appears initially in the first and third lines of the opening tercet. In all, it comprises five tercets and a concluding quatrain. Before the villanelle was made literary by the French in the late 1500s, it existed as a villanella, "an old Italian folk song with an accompanying dance."--from Handbook of Poetic Forms, ed. by Ron Padgett.

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"The word villanelle, or villenesque, was used toward the end of the sixteenth century to describe literary imitations of rustic songs. Such villanelles were alike in exhibiting a refrain which testified to their ultimate popular origin. The villanelle was, in a sense, invented by Jean Passerat (1534-1602)."

Passerat's poem about a turtledove is said to be the singular originator of the scheme described by Turco.

"Passerat had written other villanelles, so-called, that did not conform to this model at all. The great Hellenist was undoubtedly aware of the innovation that he had introduced, but the form caught the attention of his contemporaries and became fixed in his lifetime. Pierre Richelet and other writers on the theory of poetry designated as villanelles only those poems that conformed to Passerat's classic example."--from Lyric Forms from France, by Helen Louise Cohen.

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"It is useful to describe the villanelle as a form in which power resides in the interplay of constant (repeating) and variable elements....a major challenge of the villanelle: packing the second through fifth tercets with appropriately varied and dense material that 'balances' and justifies the repeated material."

Author Philip K. Jason sees the villanelle as presenting a three-part structure of meaning: "introduction, development, and conclusion....this tendency for the material to split into three sections gives the villanelle form an affinity with basic cognitive and expository processes. Technically, the three parts derive from the relative weight and position of the repeating lines." Also in this vein, he discusses the idea that the villanelle lends itself nicely to "duality, dichotomy, and debate." We can imagine why.

Jason recognizes ways in which the form may be made more flexible. Regarding the refrain, he notes that altering punctuation between the lines of identical words can produce different effects. He also notes the possibilities of enjambing perhaps just the A2 tercets, and leaving those ending with A1 as stopped lines, or vice versa.

On the relation of form to function, Jason asserts that "the villanelle is often used, and properly used, to deal with one or another degree of obsession." He takes this interpretation rather seriously, saying that "There is even the potential for the two repeating lines to form a paradigm for schizophrenia....The mind may not fully know itself or its subject, may not be in full control, and yet it still tries, still festers and broods in a closed room towards a resolution that is at least pretended by the final couplet linking of the refrain lines." Wow.--from "Modern Versions of the Villanelle," by Philip K. Jason. College Literature, 1980.

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The form, according to Turco:

A1 (refrain)bA2 (refrain)

abA1 (refrain)

abA2 (refrain)

abA1 (refrain)

abA2 (refrain)

abA1A2 (refrain)

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EXAMPLES:Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;I lift my lids and all is born again.(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,And arbitrary darkness gallops in:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bedAnd sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:Exit seraphim and Satan's men:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said.But I grow old and I forget your name.(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)

--Sylvia Plath

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The Waking

I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me; so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.

--Theodore Roethke

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One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.